Segmental and Suprasegmental Instruction

Last Updated 9/18/04 5:22 PM HW

Introduction
Establishing a sound instructional plan follows careful and thorough assessment. Assessment should illuminate underlying deviations in physiological aspects of speech production and/or in phonological, semantic, and syntactic components of the language system.

Determining whether production errors are motoric or linguistic is often difficult. Whereas segmental aspects of speech strongly influence intelligibility, substantial aberrations in suprasegmental aspects may reveal underlying insufficiencies in the coordination of respiration, phonation, and articulation. These underlying aberrations may impair the realization of fluent coarticulated speech. When this occurs, efforts to improve phonetic production should be secondary to focused instruction on developing coordinated respiratory, phonatory, and articulatory aspects of production. Modifying physiological patterns may enhance production across a broad class of phonemes.

Voice Instruction
Examples of therapy and specific instructional approaches are presented for faulty respiratory support, faulty laryngeal tension, faulty pitch, and faulty resonance.

• Faulty Respiratory Support

> Examples of Instruction: Coordination of Respiration, Phonation and Articulation

• Faulty Laryngeal Tension

> Program to Reduce Vocal Tension (Tension Program)

• Faulty Pitch
  

> Instructional Sequence for Altering Inappropriate Pitch (Pitch Therapy)

> Using Technology
o Measuring and Feedback

> Instruction
{Allen clips on pitch that are at end of instruction page}
> Showing displays {SVIIcomputingpitch.mov}

• Faulty Nasality

  > Using Technology

  o Visual Feedback with Speech Spectrograms

  > Segment 1 {SVIIoralnasalstudentsample.mov}
  > Segment 2 {SVIIoralnasalvowels.mov}

Segmental Instruction

Phonemes should be selected to promote generalization of instruction from trained to untrained phonemes. Instruction should not focus on particular sounds that are in error; rather, it should focus on particular features that extend across a set of phonemes.

• Focusing on Distinctive Features
The key to successful intervention is to identify instructional strategies that effectively alter faulty patterns of production.

> Using Technology
Tutorial Clip 1 {SVIIfricatives2.mov}
Tutorial Clip 2 {SVIIfricatives3.mov}

• Instruction {go to Instruction, Mech of Prod‹distinctive features}

• Focusing on Vowel Production

> Using Technology
Visual feedback with speech spectrograms
Segment 1 {CSL_Spectrogram_vowels_1}
Segment 2 {CSL_Spectrogram_vowels_2}

• Linking Perception and Production

> Using Technology
Instruction {MG JD 13 thru 19.AAT.mov NEW}

• Technology Tutorials

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